Source: Yonhap News
–■ Prime Minister Kishida ‘Gentleman’
Fumio Kishida, who took office as Japan’s 100th Prime Minister in October last year, is known as a “Gentleman”. He has a soft personality and, unlike other Japanese politicians, he is not good at making radical remarks, so he is considered to have no “enemies”.
It is said that we live under the motto 春風 接 人, which means “Treat people warmly like the spring breeze”.
Even within the Japanese LDP, it is classified as a “dove faction”. As anyone who is even a little interested in Japanese politics knows, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Taro Aso and Yoshihide Suga, who were hardliners, talked a lot about Korea, but Prime Minister Kishida had none of that.
Hence, there were many people who had high hopes for the improvement of Korea-Japan relations. Prime Minister Kishida of “Chunpung 接 人” was also expected to join the active efforts of South Korean President Yun Seok-yeol.
However, Prime Minister Kishida is said to have been furious.
■ Assistant to Prime Minister Kishida “The Prime Minister has opened the door”
On September 15, the Yongsan National Security Bureau of the Republic of Korea announced that President Yun Seok-yeol and Prime Minister Kishida have “kindly” agreed to hold a Korea-Japan summit. Our media also did a special feature in the book, but the Japanese media were also surprised by the news.
However, according to Asahi Shimbun, Prime Minister Kishida said ‘kireta’ that day. It is a slang word that means ‘I have lost my mind due to intense emotions’, which in Korean means ‘the lid has been opened’.
Prime Minister Kishida, angry, said: “Say what you mean it hasn’t been decided?
A close associate of Prime Minister Kishida, present at the Korea-Japan summit, said the prime minister was silently listening to President Yun’s story with a dissatisfied expression on his face.
I was initially disappointed with Prime Minister Kishida. No, why are you so mean? President Yoon even went to the place he had decided at the time he had set it, but Prime Minister Kishida said that he treats people as warmly as the spring breeze …
Source: Yonhap News
–■ Japan’s prime minister ‘death and alive’ in approval ratings
Since the 1990s, when scientific opinion polls began in earnest, the degree of approval of the Cabinet has become very important in Japan.
Unlike the Korean president, who is granted a five-year term in the constitution, the Japanese prime minister’s term varies according to his degree of approval. (Of course, there have been cases where the 5-year term was not completed in Korea.)
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda stepped down when his approval rating dropped below 30% and Prime Minister Taro Aso, who had been nicknamed the “Pastor’s Prime Minister,” stepped down after his index of approval. approval fell below 20%. Additionally, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Yoshihiko Noda resigned after showing approval rates around 20%. (Due to the failure to manage the approval ratings, all became short-term prime ministers with a term of less than a year.)
Therefore, in Japan, 30% of the government approval score is called the “danger zone” and a range of 20% is called the “retirement zone”.
However, the approval rating of the Kishida government, which had exceeded 60% at the start of his inauguration, is falling sharply.
The Cabinet approval rate, which had remained intact until July, plummeted to 40% in just a month or two.
In the Jiji News poll on September 16, it came out 32.3%. The investigation period runs from 9 to 12 September, but I don’t know why it was announced on 16, but Prime Minister Kishida must have known before the announcement.
The reason for the decline in approval ratings is the Unification Church scandal. As a result of the LDP’s investigation, it was revealed that 179 of the total 381 lawmakers had been directly or indirectly associated with the Unification Church. To explain it in a way that touches the skin of our people, it can be called the so-called “Gukjeong Nongdan Unification Church”. (We also had Choi’s incident ○○ National Nongdan.)
As Prime Minister Kishida’s approval rating reached 30% for the first time, the Prime Minister’s resignation went beyond a “concern” and became a “reality”. It is no exaggeration to say that he was hit by a “flying knee kick”. (The Korean president said he doesn’t care about his approval rating, so he is not expected to even care about Prime Minister Kishida’s rating.)
Source: Yonhap News
–■ “Irritated” prime minister and “ignorant” president.
At the time, our Yongsan National Security Bureau unilaterally announced that it had readily accepted the Korea-Japan Summit. Without consulting the Japanese government.
When the two heads of state meet, forget the past and get to know each other, progressives rise like wildfire in Korea, but conservatives protest in Japan.
If our president holds a summit, he will be well received by supporters, but Prime Minister Kishida is not like that.
With a precarious approval rating of 32.3%, if Prime Minister Kishida meets the South Korean president without resolving issues such as “abandonment of the comfort women agreement” and “compensation for forced labor”, Japanese conservative advocates will not they will remain stationary. Only the news that the Korea-Japan summit has been readily agreed can turn the back on the Prime Minister.
It may not have been intentional, but it appears our president pushed Prime Minister Kishida to the edge of a cliff.
■ Brief talks and talks: a skit from the Korea-Japan summit
Now, it is understandable that Prime Minister Kishida, who is in contact with the spring wind, was so angry. His political life was at stake. The question of the “general resignation of the cabinet” due to the decline in approval ratings is a crisis that is gradually approaching reality.
On September 19, four days after the announcement of the South Korean government summit. According to a survey conducted by Mainichi Shimbun, Prime Minister Kishida’s approval rating has dropped to 29%. The approval rate of 30% also plummeted.
However, according to Asahi Shimbun’s report, even after the announcement of the unilateral summit, the Korean government continued to request the Japan-Korea summit from the Japanese side. The request continued even after arriving in New York.
How did Prime Minister Kishida feel?
To make an analogy, after getting hit with a “flying knee kick”, you fall and hang on to an “arm bar”, but someone keeps coming and asks for a hand to shake hands.
In that situation, the Korean government joined Japan and the Japanese government did not reach out, but was just taken by the “ankle”.
It appears that Prime Minister Kishida was too hard just watching the news, but in reality it was Prime Minister Kishida who was ‘desperate’. It was a situation in which the “Korea-Japan Summit” was never to be held. This was why Japan insisted on calling it an “informal meeting” in response to the Korean announcement of the “informal meeting”.
Source: Yonhap News
–■ The “popularity curse” that has hit Korea-Japan relations
If you look at the American logistics company Amazon and the Korean Coupang, you realize the importance of “real ammunition”. Both companies receive large-scale investments and do “bottom-up business” in the early stages of sales to expand their market share, dominate the market and thereby improve their profit structure. For the prosperity of the “future”, doing business with the “present” has become a tendency to turn to the market.
For Amazon and Coupang, “cash” is a real bullet, but for the leaders of Korea and Japan, the “approval rate” is a real bullet.
To improve deteriorated relations between Korea and Japan, the approval ratings of the leaders of the two countries must be high. Improving Korea-Japan relations, whether it be the Korean president or the Japanese prime minister, is a “bottom-up business” that will lower the approval rating right now. However, for the future of the two countries, the relationship between Korea and Japan cannot be left as it is.
Unfortunately, President Yoon Seok-yeol and Prime Minister Kishida are leaders without “live ammunition”. If the approval rate is around 60%, you can convince people with a bold decision to fundamentally change the relationship between the two countries. In the process, the approval rate may temporarily drop to the 40% level due to opposition. (However, it is not at a problematic level for the functioning of the state government.)
President Yoon Seok-yeol’s approval rate is currently 28%.
Prime Minister Kishida’s approval rate is 29%.
For the future, “bottom-up business” is not enough now.
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